Playbook, electrical contractor
Half the after hours messages are not the electrician's to answer
Evening messages to an electrical firm arrive in three shapes and only one of them is a job. There is the narrow emergency, which wants an instruction and a phone number and nothing else. There is the ordinary enquiry that can wait until Monday and knows it. And there is the one in between, a house with no lights at eleven at night, where the most useful answer on the whole site is that the problem is not inside the building at all.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for out of hours holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The incoming supply, the cut out and the meter belong to the network operator and the energy supplier and are never the electrician's to touch, so a dark street or a stopped meter is two phone numbers that are not yours, and handing them over at midnight saves somebody a night rate for a job nobody was allowed to do.
- A prepayment meter that has run out looks identical to a fault when you are standing in the dark with a phone torch, and it is completely answerable at any hour without anybody going near anything.
- Out of hours in this trade is rarely a rota. Most electrical firms are one or two vans, so the honest published position is a rate and a realistic reply time rather than a promise about hours, and pretending otherwise is a promise that gets remembered at six in the morning.
- The emergency subset is physical rather than technical, described in words like hot, burnt, sparked and marked, so the material has to lift those messages out of this path at the first sentence instead of letting them queue with the ordinary evening traffic.
How it arrives
- no power in the whole house at midnight
- is anyone there tonight
- what do you charge after six
- the neighbours have no lights either
- my meter has gone blank
- can someone come out on a sunday
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Who to ring when it is not you | The number for supply faults in the areas you cover, and the fact that a meter problem goes to the energy supplier rather than to an electrician. Written as a short list with the numbers in it. Almost no electrical site carries this and it is the single most useful paragraph you could put on one. |
|---|---|
| Your out of hours rate, and the hour it starts | Evening, weekend and bank holiday rates, the minimum charge that applies with them, and the time at which the standard rate stops. State a rate rather than a response time. The rate is a fact and the response is a guess. |
| What you attend at night, and what waits | Your own rule, in your own words: total loss of power in the property, water anywhere near a board, anything hot or burning. And on the other side the things that wait, such as one dead socket, a broken light or a job already booked for Thursday. |
| What happens to a message left at two in the morning | When it gets read, by whom, and what to do meanwhile. A message that promises nothing but names the morning honestly works. A cheerful acknowledgement that implies somebody is awake does not survive the night. |
The reply
First thing worth checking: if the houses either side are dark too, that is the network rather than anything in your house, and the number for supply faults is on our contact page [1]. If it is only you and the meter display has gone blank, that is your energy supplier, because the meter and the incoming supply are not ours to touch [2]. If it is neither of those, we do attend at night for a total loss of power, at the out of hours rate on the same page. Leave me your name, a number and what you can see and I will send it over, and there is a phone number at the top of this page if you would rather ring now.
The two ownership questions come first because they resolve a real share of these messages in one sentence each, at no cost and at an hour when nobody wants a discussion. Naming what the firm is not allowed to touch is what makes the redirection read as competence rather than as a brush off. Only after both have failed does the reply mention the firm's own rate.
Where it stops
The trigger. Any night message that survives both ownership checks, and instantly, without a clarifying question, anything mentioning heat, a smell, a mark, sparking or a shock.
I can pass this on but nobody will read it until the morning. Leave me your name, a number and what you can see. If it will not wait, the number at the top of this page is the one to ring now rather than waiting on a message.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say somebody will attend tonight, or within any number of hours, because there is no rota visible here and a promise made at midnight is the first thing quoted back at breakfast.
- Never suggest touching the cut out, the main fuse or the meter, all of which belong to the network operator and the supplier and are sealed by them for a reason.
- Never handle a message about heat, burning, a mark or a shock as an evening enquiry to be logged, since it leaves this path at the first word and becomes an instruction and a phone number.
- Never quote a night rate that is not published, because a figure invented in a chat window at midnight is the figure being argued about on the invoice.
Questions
- Is it odd to send people to somebody else in the middle of the night?
- It is the most valuable thing the assistant does all week. Somebody sent to the right number has power back within the hour and remembers who told them. Somebody who pays a night rate for you to look at a supply fault you are not permitted to touch remembers that too, and tells people.
- Can it work out whether it is the street or the house?
- No. It cannot see anything. What it can do is put the one question that separates them, whether the neighbours are dark as well, and hand back the two numbers either way. The question has to be the customer's to answer, which is why it belongs in the wording rather than in a diagnosis.
- Should the night rate be published?
- Publish it. The person messaging at eleven is deciding between waiting until Monday and paying, and they decide faster with the figure in front of them. Withholding it does not win you more night work, it wins you the same work with an argument attached to the end of it.
Keep reading
- Everything for a electrical contractorCall out charges, EV charger enquiries and landlord certificates are answerable. A described electrical fault is an escalation, not a question.
- Handling out of hours in generalThe difference between an emergency route and a message form, and why an honest wait time beats a promise you cannot keep.
- The two electrical prices that cannot be a number in advanceFault finding is sold by time because the time is the work, and a board change can grow the moment the old circuits are tested.
- Who the invoice goes to is rarely who opened the doorThe tenant let you in, the agent instructed the job and the landlord pays. The invoice and the report go to different people.
- The complaint that arrives the day after the report doesA coded observation on an inspection reads to some customers as an upsell. That complaint is about trust, not about wiring.
Try it on your own material
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